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Much of what we know about being German in Chile from the late nineteenth century through the interwar period stems from the men who ran successful businesses in cities such as Osorno, Santiago, Valparaiso, and Valdivia. Scholars frequently use them, their associations, and their institutions to highlight this immigrant community’s economic successes, these men’s professional skills, and their contributions to the Chilean state. The family letters circulating around Luise Rudloff in Valdivia during the interwar period, however, tell us much more about how German-speaking Chileans negotiated multiple economic crises and opportunities, national upheavals, and geopolitical shifts. Most importantly, they reveal the persistence of shared mental maps among family members, in which Europe, Latin America, and North America were intimately intertwined. Families were not simply spread across these continents, they all were living simultaneously on them, tied into each other’s lives by correspondence that was managed and, in some ways, perpetuated by daughters, grandmothers, mothers, and their children. That correspondence has the potential to upend our historical narratives of this tumultuous period.Glenn Penny is the Henry Bruman Chair of History at UCLA.
The Max Kade Center for German-American Studies curates collections on the German-speaking migrant and exile experience in the U.S., fosters interdisciplinary inquiry into causes and effects of transnational migration, and offers a welcoming space for international cultural and academic exchange. The MKC is located at 1134 W 11th St., Lawrence, KS 66044. For parking instructions, please visit our website.
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1134 W. 11th St., Lawrence, KS, United States, Kansas 66044
